Your data entries are safe in the database and YOU control who sees the information. Data can only be viewed down to county level; no specific locales can be viewed by others online or elsewhere. Here's a few simple pointers on how to add data quickly to the database:

1) Go to http://www.naherp.com
2) Register
3) Click on "Add Record"
4) Fill in all the blanks (date and time can be found on your digital pic or approximated by the month and year for slides or prints)
a) gps is entered by clicking on the little tiny wrench symbol above the latitude box. dial into the map that pops up until you get to the spot, then click once.
b) adding accurate gps eliminates the need to fill in the locality or elevation, but many choose to do this also.
c) Determine whether your entry is "non-sensitive", "sensitive", or "closed". I seldom use "closed" unless I'm really, really cautious about who gets that data, so if you are very protective of an entry, use "sensitive" or "closed". At the bottom of the form there is a box that says "Restrict public access to this record." Use this box to protect the county name or date from public viewing. This should only be done if the county is small and you fear someone might find you favorite spot, or if you want an odd date kept from public knowledge (like way early in the season or something most people are just not aware of and you want to keep it that way). Then, no one but you will see anything but the name of the animal, photo, and state name. You will need to give permission for those entries to be released. If you mark an entry as "Non-sensitve", you will not need to give permission for the data to be released for an approved reason. I usually only restrict public access to entries I consider at risk for one reason or another...like Mtn Kingsnakes, certain turtles, SF Garters, certain Cal King morphs, etc, and only for rare circumstances. For example, everyone knows April is a good month to see Mtn Kings, but I might find one at a weird time of year, so I restrict that entry. Use your own judgement.
5) Upload picture from the "choose file" button, fill in the Quantity box to reflect the number of animals in your voucher pictures, note any extra animals you saw but did not photo in the notes section. For example: You vouchered 1 Cal King, but saw 3 (2 got away), so you write in the notes section "2 more seen but not vouchered".
6) Add any notes you want
7) Click "Submit"
8) To add another record for the same species, click the "copy" symbol at the top of the finished entry page (left of the red "x"). This will copy your last entry onto a new entry form. Just add the new photo, new time and date (if different), new "Age" (if different), new gps coordinates, and click "submit" and you are done with a new entry. This technique works well if you have multiples of the same species to enter or even different species from the same spot (just change the species name).
9) When you finish adding all your records, click on "My Records in Google Earth" and save it. Then, open it, and you will see little icons in your google earth map that represent each of your entries. Mine looked like this two years ago:

Remember, the gps cannot be seen by anyone but you, and you will not have to fill in the elevation or locality sections of the entry form unless you really want to.
Good luck...and get that data into the database.

Thanks for the info Brian. As I'm new on here and wanted to contribute to the database in the coming year but was curious how to gather the GPS data from Google earth since that's what I'm going to be using.
Hopefully dedicating all my camping/backpacking trips this year around herps will yield some good finds.

This was great Brian, but I do want to add my own opinion on a couple things:

If you don't know an exact date and "guess", I think it would be proper to state that in the notes (as in, sighting was made the 2nd week of February, I'm not sure about the exact day). Or you can just enter the month and year. Guessing without noting that it was a guess may lead to inaccurate information - a researcher might check the weather for that (potentially incorrect) day and think that Tiger Salamanders were moving in especially cold conditions, for example.

Adding elevation is easy if you have the GPS already. There are some cases where the elevation may give away a locality, but I think in those cases it would be better to just make it a non-public record rather than leave something out of the data. Most of the time it's nice to have there. And by including both elevation and locality, you help provide a backup in case the GPS is incorrect. Some museum records have had incorrect GPS entries caught because the locality/elevation was correct.

The "copy" function works well not only for multiples of the same species, but also for different species when they are found on the same day and at the same locality.

I sent Scott a PM about making it a sticky...but I haven't heard back yet...HELLO...SCOTT...where are you...?
Jonathan: I made an edit to stress your points (slightly). I am still not going to add elevation or locality if I plug in the correct gps. It's redundant.

jonathan wrote:And by including both elevation and locality, you help provide a backup in case the GPS is incorrect. Some museum records have had incorrect GPS entries caught because the locality/elevation was correct.

Good points Jonathan.

As for only entering GPS, you might think "hey I double checked that is was correct so I dont have to worry about entering a locale." But the problem with that is the people you send the data to dont know how you inputted the data or whether you double checked where the GPS was on a map. All they see is a string of coords, and a number string has a much greater chance for typos than a word string in a locality field. But if you provide a geo-referrence in the locality field it removes the doubt in the GPS coords and serves as a quality control for the people using your records. A record with both GPS and locale is regarded as higher quality than "lazy" records that only have GPS.

Also, if you're not primarily concerned with winning a contest... you CAN include one or two voucher shots (but equal to the quantity box) and put something like; 'two of twelve seen at this locality' in the comments box. Just saying.... you don't HAVE to make an entry for each and every herp you see, in the case of multiples.... jim

A picture is worth a 1000 words, so I enter everything I see, unless it's a bunch of ringnecks under the same rock...then I just take a pic of all of them and enter the number. But, sometimes I photo every salamander under a single board separately...

hellihooks wrote:Also, if you're not primarily concerned with winning a contest... you CAN include one or two voucher shots (but equal to the quantity box) and put something like; 'two of twelve seen at this locality' in the comments box. Just saying.... you don't HAVE to make an entry for each and every herp you see, in the case of multiples.... jim

hellihooks wrote:Also, if you're not primarily concerned with winning a contest... you CAN include one or two voucher shots (but equal to the quantity box) and put something like; 'two of twelve seen at this locality' in the comments box. Just saying.... you don't HAVE to make an entry for each and every herp you see, in the case of multiples.... jim

Brian Hubbs wrote:I sent Scott a PM about making it a sticky...but I haven't heard back yet...HELLO...SCOTT...where are you...?
Jonathan: I made an edit to stress your points (slightly). I am still not going to add elevation or locality if I plug in the correct gps. It's redundant.

Thank you. It's a decent compromise. Like Nate said though, putting both GPS and locality is a quality check for future researchers - it helps stress that you really did find that rattler there.

Some other useful (?) Google Earth user's addenda from someone who did a lot of this last year:

1. With Google Earth, you don't need to enter a push pin to get the GPS spot. Just double click or hold the mouse over the exact spot and the Lat and Long and elevation of that spot will appear on the bottom of the screen. BUT, if you move the mouse/cursor, you move the coordinates so be careful that you are positioned on the correct spot.

Helpful ways to use this info -
- 1a. If you have a wide screen, just open up Google Earth on one side of your screen and the NAFHA data entry form on the other side.
- 1b. No wide screen? No problem. Open Google Earth full screen and the NAFHA entry page slightly less than full screen so you can see Google earth's coordinates at the bottom of the screen from below it.
- 1c. If you have a Mac, buy a computer to enter data into NAFHA or figure it out yourself.

If you have already entered data without elevation, download the KML file and you can double click an entry and google earth will zoom there, giving the lat/long and elevation at the bottom of the screen.

2. It is a lot easier to enter the coordinates in the NAHerp entry fields as decimal values, not DD.MM.SS.
It is quicker to enter 40.175817 and -89.643858 than 40 10'32.94N and 89 38'37.89W (in case you found something in this plowed field near Luther, IL?).

To do this, in Google Earth, go to Tools, Options, 3D View, and choose Show Lat/Long as Decimal Degrees. Do the same on your GPS unit or just import you GPS coordinates into Google Earth with a USB cable.

3. Don't forget the minus sign on the longitude or you will end up with a bunch of Chinese entries. Make sure you check the validity of your records at this link - http://www.naherp.com/search.php?error=1

4. Export your records as a CSV file and open them up in Excel (or equivalent) (http://www.naherp.com/user/export.php). It is an easy way to check for missing data by sorting on particular columns, and it is a good backup of your data.

Nature Nate wrote:with this sticky we should get rid of the Add Records (bulk) so that we always have more complete vouchers and less short vouchers.

I've never had much use for it anyway, and I've often entered a lot of records at the same time. Is there anyone who is still actually using it? I think the "copy record" function is so much more useful. If I flip a gopher and a ringneck at the same time, I just enter one with all the data, hit "copy record", change the species, age, sex, and upload the new voucher, and I'm done.

h this sticky we should get rid of the Add Records (bulk) so that we always have more complete vouchers and less short vouchers.

I've never had much use for it anyway, and I've often entered a lot of records at the same time. Is there anyone who is still actually using it? I think the "copy record" function is so much more useful. If I flip a gopher and a ringneck at the same time, I just enter one with all the data, hit "copy record", change the species, age, sex, and upload the new voucher, and I'm done.

I tried to get it removed, and I was shoot down.. Several people use it, personally I would like to get rid of it, that and the short form. There is no way to select method in those and DOR's are not entered correctly.

I used the "copy" feature for the first time this past weekend. Very useful. However it makes it easy to repeat a stupid error that requires manually going back and editing each error individually. For some reason I thought the year was 1963. I had to manually reenter all the dates individually.. D'Oh!